


find us side by side

by orphan_account



Series: secondhand rapture [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, I am such Trash, I don't even know okay, Multi, possibly even ooc, this is all ben affleck's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 17:17:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7231633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce knows the first time he sees her that’s he in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	find us side by side

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [but you have got my favorite face](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189416) by [likewinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning). 



> Where do I even begin? Um, okay. I haven't written anything in 7 years and then this morning I was like, "You know what is fucking awesome? Jason Todd as a girl! And then things got all kinds of out of control. Please know that I have never read a Batman comic book and have only watched two of the movies (the original and the George Clooney one), so if my Batman is way, way OOC, I am so very, very sorry and please, do not burn me at the stake. I wrote this just to get it the hell out of my brain and then thought, "Well, why not post it?". Also this is so very unbeta'd, again, I apologize. And I tried to keep things as close to canon as I could, but I got all my information off of Wikipedia and then turned Jason into a girl, so in case you couldn't tell, this is also highly AU. And if you read this far, and still want to brave reading the fic, then God Bless You. (:

Bruce knows the first time he sees her that’s he in trouble.  She’s young, is the first thing he notices.  Hard not to, even with the mini-skirt and dark eyeliner she has on.  Her black hair is long, messy like it hasn’t been brushed in a while, and even from his spot across the rain-slicked street, he can see that her eyes are a vivid blue.  He thinks, _I am **fucked**_.    He was on his way to meet Dick to head off a weapons shipment between a gang that had been causing him more trouble than they were worth and an overly-arrogant mobster with a fetish for sharp, shiny toys.  But now all he can focus on is the fact that not only is the girl clearly young, she’s _too young_ , way too young to be doing what she’s obviously doing.  A car pulls up on her side of the street and she moves out from underneath the glow of the streetlamp she was standing under and walks up to it. 

 _No_ , Bruce thinks.  _Don’t._   He wants to stop her, to race across the street and pull her away, take her back to wherever she calls home.  She’s so young.  But he can’t risk causing a scene and blowing his cover.  Not tonight.  Not with so much on the line.  And it would cause a scene.  Prostitution runs rampant in Gotham, just like everything else seemed to.  Take care of one problem, another one pops up.  Still, she was so young.

Bruce watches as her cherry-red lips curl up around the cigarette in her mouth in a smirk as she looks whoever is in the car up and down.  They say something to her and she laughs, head thrown back.  Seeming to come to some sort of internal decision, she takes a final drag from the cigarette and then flicks it carelessly to the ground before smoothing her skirt over her thighs and climbing gracefully into the car.  With a vicious roar, the engine starts and the car goes careening off wildly down the street.  Bruce stares at the spot she was in just a second ago until his eyes go blurry and then he melts back into the shadows of the alleyway and goes to work.

***

Her name is Jasey Todd and she’s sixteen years old and her parents are dead.  Bruce cannot.  So, Bruce makes what is either the best or worst decision of his life.  He takes Dick aside one day and with a firm clap on the back says, “Congratulations, Dickie Bird, all these years and you’re finally getting promoted.”  And then he makes Jasey Todd the new Robin. 

***

Her training goes fucking terrible for the first two weeks.  Scratch that, _everything_ goes terrible for the first two weeks.  She’s a quick learner, but she bitches 24/7 about the exercises Bruce puts her through, first saying that they’re too difficult; then, as she gets better, that they’re too easy.  Bruce thinks she just likes to complain.  She’s always running her mouth, never shuts up even when she’s smoking and Jesus, did he wish she would stop _that_ habit.  Dick helps with training when she lets him, but it’s mostly just them, Bruce and Jasey.  Nobody else on Earth has ever driven Bruce crazier.

They get into more fights in those first fourteen days then Bruce thinks he has ever gotten into in a lifetime.  She refuses to follow any of the rules he sets and she sneaks out at night to God knows where and comes back drunk and smelling like cheap cologne.  He puts his foot down on the fifteenth day with the ultimate of ultimatums, either get her shit together or get out.  That night she stays in and when he wakes up the next morning, she’s made him an omelet.  Bruce still feels pretty smug about it. 

***

Having her live in the mansion takes some getting used to.  It’s not like a girl’s never lived there before, there was Bruce’s mom and then Barbara, but Jasey is a slob and she leaves her stuff everywhere.  It makes Alfred severely displeased.  There are shoes in the halls, kicked off wherever Jasey got tired of wearing them, lacy bras on towel racks, hair ties fucking everywhere, bubblegum ice cream in the freezer, pop music playing at weird hours.  She does laundry one day to make up for scuffing the floors in the dining room with her Doc Martens and turns all of Dick’s white t-shirts pink.  He doesn’t talk to her for two days and Bruce laughs until he thinks he’ll be sick from it.

Soon, he doesn’t know how he lived his life without her in it.  She’s loud and bright and she takes up all of his thoughts until even all of his dreams are about her.  He’s in way over his head.  “What are you doing, Bruce?” Dick asks him, late one night after they come home.  Bruce stops, one foot out of the Batmobile.  Dick sighs.  “Just don’t hurt her, okay?”  He pats Bruce on the shoulder like Bruce is the one who’s younger and then gets out of the car, closing the door softly behind him.

On Friday nights, they watch movies.  Bruce had always been too busy to just relax and enjoy the entertainment room in the mansion, but Jasey makes it a tradition for the five of them, her, Bruce, Dick, Barbara, and Alfred to gather there every Friday night they could.  They watch mostly action movies and eat way too much popcorn and Jasey always falls asleep on Bruce’s lap before the end of the movie.  He watches her sleep as the paramedics take Charlie to the hospital in Mean Streets.  Her hand is curled over the top of his knee.

***

Jasey pins him on a Thursday towards the end of the first month and his heart swells up with so much pride that he wants to fucking puke.  Not to mention what it does to his dick, her tight little body pressed up right against his, her hands with their orange-polished nails pinning his wrists to the mats.  And he could so easily take back control.  So easily just roll them over and get his mouth, his hands all over her.  He doesn’t.  Not yet anyway.

Bruce knows she wants it, though.  It drives him crazy, the way she looks at him, the way she’s always touching him in some way, holding his hand or sitting on his lap or having him carry her on his back through the house.  He just can’t bring himself to do anything about it yet.  She comes into his office late one night, long after he thought she had been in bed, and climbs into his lap like she always does.  “What’s wrong, little bird?” he asks, wrapping his arms around her.  She smells like vanilla and strawberries and he buries his face in her dark hair as he waits for her to reply.

“Bruce, do you like me?”

He freezes.  It is, at heart, such a juvenile question, that all the reasons that he shouldn’t even be holding her the way he is spring to mind.  But then she shifts in his lap, turning so she can face him dead-on and those blue eyes stare straight into his and he’s gone.  “Of course, Jay, you know I do.”

She stares at him for a beat longer, and then, “Prove it.”

So, he does.  Bruce kisses her, the way he’s been dying to for the past three months, puts his hands on her waist and pulls her up close against him.  She swings her leg over his hip until she’s straddling his lap and yeah, that’s good, really fucking good.  He deepens the kiss, one hand coming up to cup her face as his tongue sweeps into her mouth.  Jasey makes a desperate little noise that goes straight to his cock and then she rolls her hips against his, her hands scrabbling at his shirt.  “Please,” she says against his mouth.  “Please, Bruce, I want…”

“Bruce!  The signal, the fucking signal…Oh, shit!”

“What the fuck, Grayson?”

Dick glares at him. “ _Me_ , what the fuck?  _You_ , what the fuck!  It’s go-time!”

Bruce is going to fucking murder somebody.  Jasey climbs off his lap, a bright pink blush spreading across her cheeks.  Her voice is slightly higher than normal when she asks, “So, what’s happening?  Why are they signaling us?”

“It’s the Riddler.  He busted out of Arkham about half an hour ago according to the report Barbara just hacked into.”

“Shit.  Those fuckers need tighter security.  You’re staying here,” Bruce said this last part to Jasey, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“But-“

“No.  Don’t even try it.”

She snuck out and followed them, of all the dumbass decisions.  That damn kid was going to kill him or get herself killed, God forbid.  The show-down with the Riddler came to a head at the docks, with Dick stunning him and shutting him the fuck up, if temporarily.  _Finally_ , Bruce thought.  If he had to hear one more wisecrack he was seriously going to re-think his ethics code.  They dropped the asshole back off at Arkham and had just started home when Bruce realized that they were being followed. 

He was not pleased to find out that Jasey was the one that was following them.  He didn’t yell at her in the street, or in the Batcave, or in the foyer.  He kept his cool all the way up until she tried to follow Dick upstairs and then he grabbed her arm and went in.  “What the hell were you thinking?”  Dick started taking the stairs two at time and quickly disappeared, the slam of his bedroom door echoing back down to them.

“I thought maybe I could help if something happened.”

“You could have gotten hurt!”  Bruce knows he’s losing his temper, but he can’t control it.  He worries all the time that she’ll get hurt, that something will happen to her, that’ll he lose her.  She’s more than ready to go out on the streets with them, but he can’t let her go.  He just can’t.

“Why are you even training me for this job if you’re so worried about me getting hurt?  Dick gets hurt all the time!  You don’t yell at him like you’re yelling at me!”  He can tell she’s really upset, her eyes are blurry with tears and her cheeks are red, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

“That’s different!”

“How?  How is it different?  Because-“

He can’t stand for her to be angry at him.  He closes the distance between them and kisses her, pours all of his anger and fear into it.  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.  “I’m so sorry, I don’t want to fight.”

“You won’t lose me,” she says and she smiles when she says it like she’s trying to reassure him.

“I know.”

 “Bruce, I really want this.  I want to be Robin.  You’re going to have to trust me, though.”  She looks up at him, her eyes big and blue and he feels his heart spasm in his chest.

“Okay,” he says with a smile that he doesn’t feel.  “You’re right, it’s time.  You can start tomorrow.”

This time, she kisses him, and he tries to ignore the foreboding filling every part of his body.

***

So, she becomes Robin.  And they, well, they can’t keep their hands off each other.  He won’t have sex with her, he’s still holding off, but at every available opportunity they’re making out like horny teenagers.  Granted, Jasey _is_ a teenager, but still.  Dick gets so sick of them that he threatens to get his own place and Jasey just laughs and then whispers in Bruce’s ear how much she wants to suck his dick.  So, yeah, things are good.  Things are fucking great.  And then of course everything goes to shit.

It starts off as Selina’s fault.  Its Wayne Enterprises annual charity gala and Jasey won’t stop bugging Bruce about being his date.  “You can’t,” he explained to her a million times over.  “I can’t just show up to my company party with a sixteen year old as my date, I’d have to enact vigilante justice on _myself_!”

“Then why can’t I go as Dick’s date?  He’s only 21.”  She’s whining now, legs dangling off the end of his desk.

“Because you’re not Dick’s girl.”

“So that’s all I am to you?  Just _your girl_?”  Jasey says it as though the very phrase offends her and Bruce sighs, rubbing his temples.  He so did _not_ need this to turn into an argument.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Barbara said that you used to date a woman named Selina Kyle.  That she was your girlfriend.  And that she was going to be at the gala.  Is that why you won’t take me, because you’re taking her instead?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”  Now he’s just pissed.  Pissed at Jasey because she won’t take no for an answer, pissed at Barbara because she apparently doesn’t know when to keep her damn mouth shut, pissed at Selina because when is he not pissed at Selina, and pissed at himself for having this conversation in the first place.  “No, I am not taking Selina to the gala.  I haven’t even spoken to her in months.”

Jasey sticks her lower lip out.  “Promise?”

Bruce sighs.  “Come here,” he says, pulling her onto his lap.  “If I could, little bird, you know I would take you.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

He goes to the gala and it’s boring and terrible and too many women throw themselves at him, but at least he raises a lot of money for… _What was it?  Oh yeah, sea life._ He steals a bottle of champagne from the bar and takes it home to where Jasey is waiting in his bed.  She’s half-asleep, wearing one of Dick’s old Gotham Knights shirts and a pair of lacy pink panties, but she sits up when she sees him, reaching with grabby hands for the champagne bottle.  “Let’s get drunk,” she says.  And they do.

Later, after some of the buzz has worn off, and after he ate her out until she screamed so loud he was afraid Alfred might actually retire, she raises her head up off his chest and asks, “Do you love me?”

Bruce Wayne has never told anyone that he loved them.  Not since his parents died.  His throat swells up.  Of course he loves her.  He loved her from the first moment he saw her under that streetlamp.  He wills his mouth to form the words.  _I love you._ They don’t come.  And so she leaves.

***

A week passes, then two.  He tries to talk to her, but she avoids him at all costs, and he lets her have her space.  He knows he fucked up.  They go out onto the streets and they fight crime and they come home and they don’t speak.  Dick stays out of it, probably wisely, and Alfred, if he notices anything, doesn’t say.  Two more days pass and Bruce has had enough.  He corners her in the Batcave after her workout with Dick, wishing he could just rip his heart out of his chest and hand it to her.  _Here take this._

“What do you want, Bruce?”

“You, Jay.”  It’s the only truth he knows.

Jasey ignores him and heads into the house, pulling her hair out of its ponytail so it falls in messy curls down her back.  He follows her into the entertainment room where she finally whirls around and spits, “What?  Do you want me to get you off or something?  I’m sure you could find someone else…“  She doesn’t even finish what she’s saying before she’s crying, great big tears like he’s never seen her cry before, that break his fucking heart.

“Is that all you think I want from you?” he asks fearfully, his throat tight.  “I don’t.  Baby, I don’t.”  He crosses the room to her, can’t not have her in his arms, not when she’s like this.  She pushes him away at first, but then she goes weak, her arms winding around his middle and her head pressing into his chest.  “You are so much more to me than that,” he says, because he has to make sure she understands.  “You’re everything to me.”

“But you…you don’t…”  She’s still crying so hard that she has to pull away from him and take a deep breath before she can finish her sentence.  “You don’t love me,” she says.

 _Man the fuck up, Bruce._   He cups her face in his hands, making sure she’s looking at him.  “Jasey, I do love you.  I’ve always loved you, I was just too chickenshit to tell you.”

She giggles at that, her mouth curving up into that beautiful smile that he adores and he hugs her to him, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.  “I love you, little bird.”

“I love you, too.”  She tugs him down to her so she can kiss him and after two weeks without kissing her, it feels like he’s come home after being away for years.  He pulls her down onto the couch, onto his lap, and they kiss until he’s so hard he feels like he’s going to pass out if she doesn’t touch him.  “I love you,” he says again, just because he can and runs his fingers across her swollen lips.  She sucks the tip of his index finger into her mouth and he groans. 

“I love you.  I want you, Bruce” she says.  “Please.”

He carries her to the bedroom and they don’t come out until the next afternoon.

***

Things go back to normal for a while.  They drive the streets at night, the moonlight lighting their way, and they kiss in dark alleyways while Dick pretends to hurl, and sometimes they even take out bad guys.  Word spreads across Gotham City that the Batman has a new Robin and crime drops slightly.  They fight side by side, moving in perfect unison, mirror images of each other.  “You know, you might be a better Robin than Dick ever was,” Bruce says to her one night while they wait for the police to come pick up the gang members they accosted.  Jasey giggles, her face lit up in the glow of the cigarette dangling from her lips.

Dick, who had tagged alone, scoffs.  “I wouldn’t trust your opinion not to be biased judging by the fact that your hand was just between her thighs.”  They both flip him off.  “I hate this job, I should go back to the circus,” he mutters without any real heat, stealing Jasey’s cigarette and taking a long drag from it.

“Hey, fuck you,” she laughs, stealing it back.

“You’re killing yourselves,” Bruce tells them and this time he’s the one who gets flipped off.

***

That winter, just after Christmas, the Joker breaks out of Arkham.  It should have been simple.  But nothing is ever simple with the Joker.  Two nights after he breaks out, Jasey is on a solo patrol.  Fate, bad luck, whatever you want to call it, something happens and she winds up patrolling a warehouse that may or may not have a drug shipment coming in, while Bruce and Dick look for the Joker.  Turns out, the Joker was looking for Jasey.

This is what she remembers:  Bruce not wanting her to go out that night because the Joker still hadn’t been caught.  Arguing with him because she could take care of herself.  _“Alright, fine, fine.  Be careful, okay?  I love you.”_   Hearing a noise and walking into the warehouse.  Pain.  The gleaming metal of a crow bar.  So much pain.  “ _Such a pretty little Robin.”_   The tick tick tick of the bomb.  Shouting.  Gun shots.  Bruce’s face.  _“No, don’t close your eyes, Jasey, don’t-!”_ **Darkness.**

*******

She’s dead.  Jasey Todd is **dead**.  Bruce is going to burn down the entire fucking world.  This is all his fault.  He never should have let her go out on the streets.  He gets home that night and he cries for the first time in almost thirty years. He didn’t experience this kind of raw grief when his parents died, and that somehow makes it even worse.  For days, he locks himself in his bedroom, trying to hold onto the scent of her in his sheets.  He refuses to talk to anyone, even Alfred, and when he finally does come out of his room, it’s only to go to her grave.  “I’m sorry, Jay ” he says.  “I’m so fucking sorry.” 

All Bruce can do is think about her.  She haunts his dreams.  He dreams of her smile, her laugh, the way she sounded when he made her come.  He wakes up hard and aching and expects to find her lying next to him, black curls spilled over the sheets, but she isn’t.  He’s in a nightmare.  So, he becomes the nightmare.  He throws himself into his work.  If he can help the people of Gotham City, if he can keep his people safe, then maybe Jasey didn’t just die for nothing.  His tactics get rougher, his ethics code and the line between vigilante and villain blurring more and more each night.  Dick is getting worried about him, but he doesn’t know how to help.  Nobody can help. 

A few months after the accident, Tim Drake has wormed himself into being the new Robin.  It took a lot of convincing on Dick’s part, but the shrimp is in training.  Bruce didn’t want a new Robin, not at first.  It was too soon, it was always going to be _too soon_.  But then the kid went and saved both their asses from Two-Face, and okay, maybe this was what Bruce needed.  A fresh start.  He wasn’t going to screw this one up.  He couldn’t.

***

A year passes.  Tim takes to being Robin perfectly.  Another year passes.  The pain is starting to lessen just slightly.  Bruce can talk about her now without feeling like he wants to kill himself.  He’s back to following the straight and narrow path of vigilantism.  And then the time to get revenge comes.  The Joker busts out of Arkham yet again.  Bruce is seriously starting to wonder if the guards don’t just get bored and start letting people out for fun.  “What are you going to do?” Dick asks quietly as they suit up.  Bruce knows what he’s asking.  And he also knows it’s so tempting.  But he can’t.  Jasey would want him to be a better man than that.

“I’m going to lock his fuck-ass, clown-self right back the fuck up,” Bruce says.

They head downtown, sans Tim.  _“No, you cannot come along, shut the fuck up and don’t argue.  So, help me God, Tim, if you sneak out, I will burn your Xbox.”_   The traffic is light tonight with the rain, and they make good time until they get to the red light in front of the thrift shop.  Suddenly, she’s standing right there in front of them.  Time seems to slow down.

Jasey Todd has been dead for two years, four months and six days, but she’s staring right at Bruce through the rain-streaked windshield of the Batmobile like she never took her last breath in his arms and his heart along with it.  She’s wearing red, from head to toe, and he wouldn’t know it was her if wasn’t for the fact that her mask was ripped half-way from her face.  He slams the brakes so hard that his head jerks back against the seat.  She pauses in the middle of the street and just looks at him for a moment, her head tilted quizzically, and then she bolts, disappearing into the shadows of the alleyway.

Bruce throws the car into park and almost kills himself trying to get out of it and run after her.  Behind him he can hear Dick saying, “Holy shit.  Holy shit!  Babs, you’re not going to believe this!”  And then, “Fuck off, Tim.”  Bruce ignores him, ignores the fact that he parked the Batmobile at a red light, ignores everything except the fact that Jasey is alive.  She’s alive.  “Jasey!”  He shouts her name desperately, his voice tearing out of his throat almost painfully.  “Jasey, please!”  She’s right in front of him, her hair streaming behind her in the wind, so close, he can almost…She disappears into the night.

Bruce sucks in a breath and then he falls to his knees, his hand reaching out towards her.  “Jasey.”

That’s where Dick finds him a few minutes later.  “Come on, Bruce, we gotta go.  We gotta go.  He’s got a hostage, Bruce.”  And so Bruce gets up and he goes to face the man who has taken almost everything from him.

The Joker is holed up in an abandoned lipstick factory.  “Ironic asshole,” Dick mutters as they pull up.  They walk right in, no bullshit, everyone knows what they’re here for.  The Joker has kidnapped a middle-aged bank teller and tied her to one of the conveyor belts.  He’s also nowhere in sight.  The teller is a distraction, a decoy.  They rescue her and get her to safety and then Dick lets out a booming, “Okay, Ronald McDonald, show your face, you ugly motherfucker!”  Bruce snickers, despite his foul mood. 

Over the earpiece he hears Tim say, “Ooh, nice burn, Grayson!”

“Butt out, kid, things could ugly,” Bruce says.

“That’s why I got popcorn.”

“Brat,” Bruce mutters fondly.

“I heard that.”

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my two favorite vigilantes?  Boys, to what do I owe the pleasure?”  The Joker strolls out from behind a door marked No Exit, his arms crossed playfully across his chest.

“You know what you did,” Dick says, pulling out his stunner.

“Hmm, no, sorry, you’ll have to be more specific.  I’ve done a lot of things.”

“Cut the shit, Jack,” Bruce barks.  “Why don’t you make this easier on all of us and waltz your ass back to Arkham where it belongs?  I’m sure Harleen is missing you, although God knows why.”

The Joker bares his teeth at them.  “First, let’s play a game.  I call it, Resurrection!”  He whips open the door he entered through and pulls Jasey through it and into the room.  She looks even more beat up then she did an hour ago.  Her hands are cuffed together and there’s a strip of duct tape over her mouth.  Bruce pales.

“Let her go, Jack, right now.”  Bruce can’t look away from her, terrified that if he takes his eyes off her, she’ll disappear.

“Why would I do that?  You know, when I kill somebody, I like them to _stay dead_!”  The Joker’s maniacal laughter fills the factory as Bruce lunges towards him, fueled by blind rage.  Fuck ethics.  He’ll kill him.  He’ll rip his throat out.

“Bruce!” Dick shouts.

There’s a bang and then smoke.  Jasey, where is Jasey?  He has to find her.  _I can’t lose her again.  I can’t._ **Everything goes dark.**  

***

“Bruce, wake up.  Come on, wake up.”

Bruce opens his eyes.  The first thing he sees is Barbara’s worried face above his, her long, red hair falling around her shoulders and onto his chest.  “What happened?” he says.

“You tried to kill the Joker, that’s what happened.”  Barbara frowns, not like she disapproves, more like she’s disappointed that she failed.

He calls her on it as he sits up, noting with relief that nothing seems to be broken.  “Don’t sound too happy about it.”

“Asshole,” she says.

And then he remembers.  “Jasey.  She’s alive.  Is she…?”  Bruce can’t even think about it.  “Barbara, tell me Dick got her out of there.”

Another frown, this one deeper.  “She disappeared, Bruce.  The Joker’s back in Arkham where he can rot, but we can’t find any trace of Jasey.”  Bruce has known Barbara Gordon long enough to know when she’s with-holding information and the twist in her mouth and the way she’s playing with the hem of her shirt, tell him she’s not sharing the whole story.

“Tell me,” he says.

She hesitates, but then says, “Last night, Dick and Tim went to dig up Jasey’s grave, to make sure it was her.”

Bruce suddenly feels like he might be sick.  “What did they find?”

Barbara looks at him pointedly.  “That’s the thing, Bruce.  They didn’t find anything.  It was empty.”

The bodies start turning up soon after that.  Bruce knows right away that they’re Jasey’s doing.  The bodies are all males, all criminals.  Rapists, sex traffickers, murderers, drug dealers, gangsters, mobsters, dirty cops, the list goes on and on.  They all put up a good fight.  They all leave a sour taste in Bruce’s mouth.  He knows she’s doing it.  But he doesn’t try to stop her.  The bodies are the only proof he has beside an empty plot in a graveyard that Jasey Todd is still out there somewhere, alive and breathing.  He can’t lose that.

Dick comes in after a night down at the docks, dealing with another dead drug dealer.  As he strips out of his suit, he says, “I saw her, Bruce.”  Bruce whips his head up from where he had been looking at surveillance footage of the place the last body was found, hoping to catch a glimpse her.  “I saw Jasey.”

A million questions run through Bruce’s mind.  He settles for, “Was she okay?”

One thing about Dick Grayson, he doesn’t lie.  “She was a little beat-up, nothing serious.”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to know if you were okay.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her you were doing shitty.”

Nope, he doesn’t lie.  “What else did you tell her?”

Dick sits down next to Bruce and steals the keyboard, fast-forwarding through the footage.  “I told her we all miss her like crazy and we love her and we want her to come home.”

Bruce closes his eyes.  “What did she say then?”

Dick is quiet for a long time, so quiet that Bruce has to open his eyes again to make sure he’s still there.  “She’ll come home when she’s ready, Bruce.”

 _Please_ , Bruce thinks.  _Please._

_***_

It’s a hot summer night when he sees her again.  Her birthday was last week, she’s nineteen years old now.  Not a kid anymore.  Her hair is shorter and when she sees him, she doesn’t run away, she stands her ground like he taught her to.  “Jasey,” he says.

“Hey, Bruce.”

Those two words cut him down to his very bones.  It’s been so long since he’s heard her voice.  There’s so much he wants to say to her.  _Come home, I miss you, I love you, I’m losing my fucking mind, please._   He stays quiet, waits for her to make the next move.

She studies him for a long time, like she’s trying to memorize the details of his face and then she says, “I’m not the same person anymore.”

_I’m not either _, Bruce thinks.  “I know that,” he says.__

Her gaze hardens.  “No, you don’t.”  She takes a step back and he has to stop himself from following her.   “I was dead, Bruce.  I was dead and then I wasn’t and then I didn’t know who the hell I was and then I finally track down the guy who killed me in the first fucking place only to have him tie me up _again_ like I’m some weak fucking damsel in distress and you show up and _you_ -you don’t even the _decency_ to kill him!  You just let him go!  _You let him go!_   He _killed_ me and _he took me away from you_ and _you let him go_!”  She’s breathing hard by the time she finishes, tears running down her cheeks, and he wants to reach for her, to comfort her, but he knows he doesn’t deserve to.

“I was going to,” he says, even though he knows it doesn’t matter know.  “When he pulled you out from behind that door, I wanted…I wanted him dead.  I was _going_ to kill him.  Dick wouldn’t let me.  He blew one of the smoke bombs, knocked the Joker out, and got me out of there.”

Jasey wipes the tears from her face.  “If you had wanted to do it, Bruce, nothing would have stopped you.”

She’s right and he knows it.  He watches as she walks away.

***

Bruce isn’t stupid.  He knows the odds of Jasey forgiving him and coming back home are slim to none.  Sometimes he wonders if she even should forgive him.  But he still holds out hope.  She repairs her relationships with Dick and Barbara, starts helping them out on missions, and Bruce opens the freezer after dinner one night to find bubblegum ice cream in it.  “Tim, is this yours?” he sing-songs, holding it in front of the fifteen year old’s face. 

“Gross, no, it’s Jay’s,” he says, shoving it away with a face of disgust and returning to the game he was playing on his tablet.

Bruce feels his heart skip a beat.  “Jay was here?” he says.

Dick and Barbara share a look over the table and then Dick shoves Tim with his elbow.  “Snitch,” he mutters.

“Jesus, sorry,” he says, shoving him back.

“She’s been here a few times when you were out,” Dick says, carefully, like he doesn’t how Bruce will react.  “She had some stuff she wanted to pick up…”

“And she needed stitches,” Tim pipes in.

“For fuck’s sake, Tim, learn to keep a secret!” Dick shouts, throwing his Popsicle stick at him in disgust.  A wrestling match breaks out.

“Did you know about this?” Bruce asks Barbara as he puts the ice cream back in the freezer.  From the floor, Dick lets out a howl of pain.  “Hey, cut that shit out, no biting!”

“I did know about it, but I was sworn to secrecy.”  Barbara finishes the last of her mint chocolate chip ice cream and puts her bowl in the sink.  “Give her time, Bruce.  She’ll come home soon, I can tell.”

Bruce’s cell phone rings at three o’clock in the morning.  **_Unknown caller_** , he reads on the screen and his heart leaps in his chest.  _Maybe_.  “Hello?” he says. 

Silence, then, “Bruce?” 

“Hey, Jay.”  He sits up, presses the phone tighter to his ear.  “Are you okay?”  He hears the soft huff she makes into the phone, can picture the frown on her face.  “Talk to me, little bird,” he says.  “What’s going on?”

She sniffles and he realizes that she’s crying.  “Bruce,” she says.  “Bruce, I wanna come home.”

His heart breaks right down the middle.  “Baby, you can come home anytime you want, you know that.  Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“No!”  She’s crying harder now.  “No, I can’t come home.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t deserve to.”

Bruce cries when he hears that, his head falling forward onto his chest.  “Jasey.”  His voice shakes.  “Don’t-don’t ever say that.  You can always, always come home.  You can _always_ come home to me.”

Her voice is so small when she says, “But I’ve hurt people.  I’ve-Bruce, I’ve _killed_ people.  Oh, God.”

“It’s okay,” Bruce says.  “It’s okay.  I promise it’s going to be okay.”  He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince.

There’s a noise in the background, loud and grating.  Then, “I have to go, Bruce”.

“No, Jasey, don’t-!”

She hangs up.

***

Summer turns into fall, and fall into winter, and winter into spring.  Bruce is at the park having a picnic with Dick, Barbara, Tim, and Alfred.  The sun is shining.  Jasey walks up to them, wearing a red sundress, her hair blowing in the wind.  “Did anyone pack bubblegum ice cream?” she asks, a smile shining on her bright, beautiful face.

Bruce smiles back at her, “Come a little closer, little bird, and find out.”

And she does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading that horrible clusterfuck. I hope you get visited by Ryan Reynolds in the very near future. If you're interested, there is also a mix to go along with this story, you can find that here: http://8tracks.com/savannahxgrace/side-by-side-a-bruce-wayne-always-a-girl-jason-todd-fanmix


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